I spend an awful lot of time talking about baseball data—what data we have, how we can tell if data is good or bad, what data we need to answer certain questions.

Here at BP we use a lot of baseball data, most of it either seasonal accounts (now from the Palmer database) or play-by-play data compiled by the fine, fine folks at Retrosheet. Up until now, we’ve had only scattered usage of one of the most exciting sources of data to come about in recent years—the PITCHf/x data collected by Sportvision for MLB Advanced Media’s Gameday product.

I’m going to introduce a few new stats for our sortable reports and cards in just a moment, but first I’d like to talk about what kinds of things we’re looking to add and what our decision process looks like.

Baseball fans may occasionally (he said drolly) disagree over the relative importance of various statistics, but all baseball fans agree about the importance of keeping track of a record of how players have performed throughout history. Whether you care about a player’s batting average or his True Average, the raw numbers are a vital part of how baseball fans engage with the game.

Since 2005, the Baseball Prospectus annual has been like my third child. I have spent more time with it than I have with my actual children, but it has been time well spent—the annual is the heir to the Bill James books that activated my love for the game as a teenager, and I’ve tried my best to live up to that standard, to make it a book you could read as well as use as a reference, to laugh with and learn from. During my term as editor, mostly in tandem with the great Christina Kahrl, the book grew in depth and complexity and achieved bestseller status. I am so proud to have done right by the legacy that the founders entrusted to me.

The minor-league regular seasons may be done, but the analysis of minor-league statistics has just begun. Observant readers have already noticed that various pages at Baseball Prospectus have started including minor-league stats with all the same depth of statistics for which Baseball Prospectus is known. For example, the “Batter Season—Standard” report shows the top-15 Triple-A leaders in BWARP:

It has been a year of great change and experimentation at Baseball Prospectus, and we’re not done yet. This week we will be unveiling several new features that we hope will increase your enjoyment of our content and statistics.